490 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



or where they are close upon a river or railway for de- 

 livery of such heavy produce ; on land newly broken- 

 up from pasture, or naturally very prolific, and what a 

 costly outlay for manures must be necessary. You, Mr. 

 Rental, as agent for estates, know very well that a crop 

 of 5 tons of potatoes per acre sold off the farm takes 

 as much mineral matter out of the land as three good 

 crops of wheat where the straw is returned as manure ; 

 and 40 tons of mangolds, if sold, exhaust an acre of 

 land as much as twenty-five good crops of wheat. But 

 I am certain that the successive wheat-growing would 

 answer, as far as yield is concerned, on land that would 

 not produce a series of paying potato crops ; for I can 

 say from personal knowledge, that the very piece on which 

 Mr. Clarke's crops are grown, is not calculated for 

 being farmed in that way. And on my own occupation 

 you know that I could not raise such yields of potatoes ; 

 and no amount of imported manures would pav for 

 themselves for that purpose. Yet I feel sure that my 

 strongish subsoil would bring a succession of Lois- 

 Weedon wheat-crops, if the plough, subsoiler, scarifier, 

 and horse-hoe were applied as directed. This new 

 system of wheat-growing is adapted to all districts of 

 heavy or tolerably solid loamy land, and can be carried 

 out by the ordinary teams and hand-labour of a farm ; 

 but your semi-garden culture of potatoes and carrots 

 and onions and cucumbers is limited to'such spots of 

 rich vegetable soil and sand-loam as Biggleswade, Sandy, 

 Evesham, and the rich loams and unctuous warp lands 

 about the Humber estuary." Several of us here broke 

 out with the objection, that the system was impracti- 

 cable, as it must take so much labour. But Frank had 

 evidently gone into the matter, and was anxious both to 

 establish his own opinion in favour of the management, 

 and induce the rest of the party to see it in the same 

 light. " Look at the list of operations, the hand- 

 labour, with the thrashing, &c. (apart from the team- 

 men), comes to about 3t]s. or 32;j. per acre, so that the 

 labour- bill is no heavier for land devoted to this system 

 of corn-growing than for land farmed in the ordinary 

 way. You are thinking, however, of the summer tillage 

 by the horses. It is quite true that wheat on the plan 

 requires scarifying and horse-hoeing several times (in 

 the busy time of turnip-sowing too), and thus more 

 horse-labour is needed than by a wheat crop as commonly 

 grown. But mind you, it takes much less horse-labour 

 per acre for wheat yearly, say for five or six years, than 

 it does for the usual crops of a rotation in the same 

 period, as I can prove by Mr. Clarke's experiments." 



"I'll tell you what, Clayfield,"' interposed our worthy 

 host, " if you are going to advocate the Lois-Weedon 

 wheat-growing in ordinary business, we shall find you 

 some nuts to crack, besides those filberts, the last dish 

 we have left of last season. By-the-bye, you are get- 

 ting eloquent about farming, and forgetting the port." 

 " Well," said Frank, " in these times it won't do to 

 evade cracking a few shells if we really want kernels. 

 I have thought over this Lois-Weedon business in re- 

 spect to my own farm of fair strong loam, and you 

 you shall have the tnattor put clearly before you." It 

 WM Rgrwd that the question should be gon« into with 



pencil and paper, to see what figures would make of it, 

 and without reporting any more of the conversation, I 

 shall give the gist of what we arrived at. 



There is no objection on the score of manual labour, 

 for the wages of men and boys (according to Mr. 

 Clarke's trial) amount only to 30s. or 329. per acre, 

 without including the team-men. Now, take the horse 

 labour : this, in the same experiment, is 23s. to 25s. 

 per acre ; while, according to the statistics of " horse- 

 power" in the R. A. S. E. Journal, the average cost 

 for ordinary rotation husbandry is 30s. per acre. But 

 there might be so much work requiring to be done 

 within a limited time, that, after all, more horses would 

 have to be kept than are wanted in ordinary farming ? 

 To resolve this and other objections, we just put Frank 

 into the new corn-culture, supposing him to have adopted 

 it " the whole hog "; and we then look into the practical 

 working of it. On his 300 acres arable he gives up 

 stock breeding and roots and artificial grasses, and 

 walks boldly into corn-growing only ; his soil being 

 specially adapted for wheat. The only restriction is 

 that he shall grow horse-keep enough for his teams ; and 

 the rest of the farm may be all in wheat if he likes. 

 However, as he must apply the manure every few 

 years, he arranges to have other crops to come first after 

 the dressing ; as, according to Mr. Smith, the wheat 

 would not stand it. And he cannot have a bit of clover 

 hay without seeding the clover in the previous year, 

 which being impossible on the intercultural strips, makes 

 some other crop also necessary. Nine horses, he says, 

 will be amply suflScient, though on his present system 

 he works fourteen ; and I may tell you by-and-by how 

 he makes this fully appear. Well, to provide food for 

 nine horses, and have proper crops for the manure . 

 (which he is to make out of wheat, bean, and pea-straw 

 eaten with oilcake and a few roots by store cattle, and 

 of the consumed horse-fodder and corn), his course is 

 supposed as follows — a three-fold rotation; numbers 1, 

 2, and 3 representing the divisions of 100 acres each : 



No. 1. 

 1st year. — Wheat, 100 acres. 2ud year. — Peas and beans, 

 75 acres; oats, 15 acres; mangels, 6 acres; and tares 

 followed by turnips, 4 acres. 3rd year. — Wheat, 75 

 acres; clover, 15 acres; wheat, 10 acres. 



No. 2. 

 Ist year. — Peas and beans, 75 acres; oats, 15 acres ; mangels, 

 6 acres ; and tares followed by turnips, 4 acres. 2nd 

 year. — Wheat, 75 acres; clover, 15 acres; wheat, 10 

 acres. 3rd year. — Wheat, 100 acres. 

 No. 3. 

 Ist year. — Wheat, 75 acres ; clover, 15 acres ; wheat, 10 acres 

 2nd year. — Wheat, 100 acres. 3rd year.— Peas and 

 beans, 75 acres ; oats, 15 acres ; mangels, 6 acres ; and 

 tares followed by turnips, 4 acres. 

 Every year there will be an acreage as follows : 



Wheat 185 acres. 



Peas and beans 75 „ 



Oats 15 „ 



Clover 15 „ 



Mangels 6 „ 



Turnips 4 „ 



Tares 4 „ 



Reckoned at eight quarters an acre, the oats will yield 

 120 quarters — enough to allow each horse a peck a- day 

 all the year round. The mangolds, at thirty tons, and 

 the late t«rBip« ftt 10 ton« per «or«* will gWe 220 ton* 



